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Elan Morgan is a writer and web designer who works from Elan.Works, a designer and editor at GenderAvenger, and a speaker who has spoken across North America. They believe in and work to grow both personal and professional quality, genuine community, and meaningful content online.

Elan Morgan: Writer + Web Designer

Mar 26

Mar 26 Starcat's Arrival, Madonna's On Rotation, And RealiZed It Is

I am too tired and busy to provide you with news today. I did not even get around to checking up on the world myself. The links I have offered are of the back-patting variety so you will visit the sites of my loved ones. Click on Mr. Visu lots and write him many annoying e-mails about how he should update more. It’s been 13 days for pity’s sake.

Starcat has come down for a visit! This makes me quite happy. It has been since Christmas since I have hung out with any of my friends from my home city, and frankly, it’s a little lonely in this town. It’s his birthday this weekend, too, so I want to come up with something fun or interesting to do. I know this expectation may be a little unreasonable in this city, but I’m willing to try. Normally, whenever Starcat and I take time out to visit one or the other’s city, we go out drinking. We don’t slip out for a couple over warm conversation. We drink. It’s beer that’s our game, and only 5% and up for alcohol content will do. We’ll talk all night long about our jobs, his new love, our creative lives; all the while our voices will be rising, rising, trying to beat past the cacophony of other drunks’ voices. Then, we will stumble home, inebriated enough to forget the act of falling asleep, and awake the next afternoon and try to come up with some place that will still serve breakfast after twelve. That’s not to say that we will necessarily fall into our old patterns, just that it is highly likely. If I can make it that far. At this moment, I am at work, and the room seems to be going dim. I’m not fainting or ill or anything like that. I am just that tired. Starcat arrived last night, and he, the Fiery One, Mr. Visu, and I went out for a couple of drinks (it was really only a couple, honest), and then I ended up staying out way too late for a work night. This is after many weeks of not getting my full eight hours sleep due to back trouble, insomnia, overactive dreaming, and whatelsehaveyou. I’m standing, but barely. I feel like my whole upper body is stacked upon itself, one set of bones resting on another resting on another resting on another, with no active musculature to support them. All of this is resting heavily in the well of my hips, which ache to lie down. No! I must stop this kind of talk. It is lulling me, lulling me. I was even starting to sway a bit on my feet. I must be strong. Starcat and I are meeting for coffee and a rousing game of Scrabble at a local coffee house after I get off work, and it makes it difficult to engage in coffee drinking and game playing when you’re face down and drooling on the table’s oh-so-smooth and seductively cool tiled surface.

Open your heart to me, baby / you hold the lock and I hold the key / One is such a lonely number / Open your heart with the key . . . Today it’s Madonna stuck in my head. Two days ago it was Billy Ocean with Get out of my dreams / Get in the back seat, baby / Get into my car / Ooh-ooh yeah-eah. The absolute worst is when I am plagued with Roll out the barrel / We’ll have a barrel of fun . . .. Believe it or not, that one gets stuck all too frequently, reverberating around inside my skull endlessly. Sometimes I’m a little teapot . . . works to kick it out of my brain, but it’s not much better. One time, after using the I’m-a-little-teapot cure, I spent part of an afternoon convinced that it was also the theme song for the game show “Jeopardy”, but when the show actually came on and I tried to do the teapot dance while the contestants were concentrating on being smart, I realized how wrong I was.

I just realized that I have an issue. Oh, there it is. I didn’t realize until now (damn, there it is again) that I had it, but I do. I insist on Canadian spellings: it’s colour, not color; it’s behaviour, not behavior; it’s favourite, not favorite. (I know, I just repeated one spelling difference three different ways, but I’m too sleepy-stupid right now to get any more complicated). Today, though, I keep bumping into this one spelling that bugs me so much, and I can’t bring myself to use the Canadian way: it’s the word realised. See how that “s” just looks so displaced, so unbalanced, so wrong? I just can’t do it. It’s the zed with its straight lines and sharp corners that cements the strong and clear feeling behind the word’s meaning. The s just looks soft and lumpish there. It has no authority. Forgive me, my fellow Canadians, but realiZed it must be.

Elan Morgan is a writer and web designer who works from Elan.Works, a designer and editor at GenderAvenger, and a speaker who has spoken across North America. They have been seen in the Globe & Mail, Best Health, Woman's Day, and Flow magazines, TEDxRegina, and on CBC News and Radio. They believe in and work to grow both personal and professional quality, genuine community, and meaningful content online.

Elan Morgan is a writer and web designer who works from Elan.Works, a designer and editor at GenderAvenger, and a speaker who has spoken across North America. They have been seen in the Globe & Mail, Best Health, Woman's Day, and Flow magazines, TEDxRegina, and on CBC News and Radio. They believe in and work to grow both personal and professional quality, genuine community, and meaningful content online.